


Marry Me (buy me dinner first)

by Wally_Birb



Series: Smoak'd [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/M, Family Issues, Felicity Is Not Weak, Marriage Proposal, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Noah Kutler's A+ Parenting, Protective!Clint, She's a damsel, She's in distress, Strike Team Delta, Undercover Missions, clint is not stupid, poorly written fight scenes, she's got this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7985263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wally_Birb/pseuds/Wally_Birb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Clint and Felicity sorta dive headfirst into this whole 'partners' thing and Clint realizes what the initials of Strike Team Delta spell out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marry Me (buy me dinner first)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [felicitysmoakqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/felicitysmoakqueen/gifts).



“Are you kidding me?” Clint asked Coulson, his jaw clenched as he looked down at the file in his hands again.

“No, Barton, I am not kidding you,” Coulson spoke in a placating tone. “We need her and you’re the only one she’s built up trust with.”

Clint rolled his eyes and threw the file down on Coulson’s desk. “I refuse.”

“Why?” Coulson tiredly asked, making Clint sputter.

“You know what she did to me.”

Coulson leaned back in his chair and scraped his hands over his face, naked exasperation playing over on his features. He had had a first row seat to the entire three year long rivalry between Hawkeye and Overwatch. It had started when Hawkeye had been sent to bring her in the first time and the hacker became the first person who ever got away from Clint Barton.

(Nat got away, but he let her and then she came back, so that doesn’t count.)

And ever since, Overwatch became the one who got away. Again. And again. And again. The current tally of their little cat and mouse game was nineteen to zero. If their feud was a little league game, someone would’ve called it by now. At this point, it was an ongoing joke in SHIELD. Well, when Clint wasn’t looking that was. When he was, no one ever dared to bring her up. Except for Natasha. She openly joked about it. Clint was pretty sure that she’d even given Overwatch tips on losing him.

Natasha was more true neutral than one would expect from a government agent. She had spent her first year building her own moral compass, one that doesn’t necessarily always align with SHIELD’s. (Hell, even Clint’s didn’t align with SHIELD’s all of the time. Hence Nat’s recruitment.) Nat not so secretly approved of Overwatch’s actions. Clint’s also pretty sure that they had exchanged numbers, because every time Natasha gets pissed at him, she’ll give him a look and pull out her phone to start texting someone.

Which honestly, might’ve been worse than the ego check Overwatch game him every time he was handed her file.

“She’s never done anything to you, and I don’t think you realize how much of a rapport you two have built.”

“We haven’t built a _rapport_ , Coulson,” Clint spat the words back at him. “She likes to make a game out of my suffering.”

Coulson shrugged. “You say potato.”

“Get Nat to do it! She has the damn hacker’s number in her cell! They talk shit about me when I piss them off, which is always!” Clint snapped.

The corner of Coulson’s mouth ticked up. “We already offered Nat the mission. She refused.”

Clint threw his hands up into the air.

Coulson rearranged his features to show his perfectly refined bitch face. “Agent Barton, this mission falls to you because you’re the only person in this organization who would actually bring her in without labelling her a lost cause and putting her down. Now, I know that you and Overwatch have a rivalry going on, but you know the work she does and you know that she does not deserve to die. You have a history of bringing home strays that no one believes in. You were the one who told me in your initial assessment that she was a worthy cause. So make your call now: bring her in, or let some other agent without your perspective put her down.”

All of the fight left Clint as he heaved a sigh the size of an elephant. He pointed at Coulson angrily before turning on his heels and leaving.

Natasha was waiting outside of Coulson’s office and gave him a smug smile.

“Don’t you go tell her about this,” Clint sighed in defeat. “Please.”

“Too late, buddy.”

“Of course.”

*

Overwatch refused to allow Natasha to give Clint her phone number (rude), so the plan to meet up was filtered through Nat. Clint wasn’t sure how she made Overwatch agree--or if Overwatch would even show up--but the spot that Natasha had given him for the meetup was a strategically sound one. He sat alone in a park--it was a Tuesday afternoon so the only foot traffic was a single dad with what Clint would guess was a two year old little girl, a group of teenagers dressed in black smoking pot when they should be in class, and two moms who seemed exceptionally frazzled handling three kids, a boy of around four years old, and a pair of twin girls about three.

Oh yeah, and it was also over an hour passed the time that Overwatch had told Clint to meet her here.

“Is this where I’m supposed to say something vague and spy-esque, right?” A bubbly voice caught Clint’s attention. Damn her for always being able to sneak up on him.

“I mean, I’m not gonna stop you if you wanted to.” Clint answered in an annoyed voice. “You’re late.”

“Actually, I’m Overwatch. You’re Hawkeye. Try to keep up.” She mimicked his tone and circled the bench to sit next to him. She was wearing a bright blue wig with brushed out curls and a knitted beanie. Her eyes weren’t her usual bright blue, but obscured by dark brown colored contacts.

“You look freaky as fuck with dark eyes,” Overwatch frowned at the way he decided to start the conversation.

“You look freaky as fuck always. Nat told me that you needed to talk. Talk.”

Clint snorted. “I don’t know what she told you, but SHIELD is zeroing in on you. At this point, it’s been agreed upon that you either need to be brought in by me or…”

“Or be put down.” Overwatch finished for him. “That’s the deal right? I figured you wouldn’t willingly spend time with me after last time unless you felt morally obligated.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “I’m not morally obligated--”

“You wouldn’t let someone die when you could give them a chance.” She waved her hand dismissively. “That’s why I like you.”

“Aw, you like me?”

Overwatched huffed out a laugh and shook her head. “Only against my better judgement. I’m not joining SHIELD. I have things to do, still.”

“Things you can’t do at SHIELD? What is so important that you need to risk your life?” He asked, brows furrowed together.

She smiled wryly. “You have my file, you should be able to tell.”

“You know exactly what’s in your file. I don’t even know your real name.”

“That’s because it doesn’t hold any weight. Not here.” Overwatch shook her head. “I haven’t actually hacked into SHIELD. I don’t know what you guys actually have other than a mostly complete list of my crimes.”

Clint frowned at her disbelievingly. “You haven’t hacked SHIELD?”

“I’ve got things to do and people to piss off. SHIELD isn’t really on either list, it’s just...a complication.” Overwatch made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Not surprising, not unpredictable, just unforeseen and slightly annoying.” Clint kept quiet for a moment, knowing what was coming. “Like you.” There it is.

“You came onto the scene two years ago at that party in Vancouver.” Clint started, remembering the rough profile they’d made of her. “You obviously have an agenda, chaotic good, but no real respect for authority. Or at least, no stock that they can handle...fucked up cases. You have peripheral crimes, but most of them seem targeted at a single hacker that goes by the handle ‘the Calculator’.”

Felicity hummed and picked at her bright purple nails. “More than I thought you’d have.”

“Didn’t think that we’d make the connection to Kutler?”

“Nah, I was pretty obvious about that. I wasn’t expecting you guys to be good enough to figure out my D&D alignment.” She snarked. “Okay, so you know that I’m going against Kutler. My life is dedicated to putting that man in jail. I cannot join SHIELD right now because that would mean a distraction and I don’t have time for those. As you so kindly have put it, people are zeroing in on me. They either want to kill me or have me join them. I’d like to deal with Kutler before they get too close.”

The archer huffed. He knew a vendetta when he saw one. “What did Noah Kutler ever do to you?”

Overwatch was silent for a while--Clint didn’t think she’d actually answer for a beat, but when she did, her words were clinical.

“He killed my mother. He made me into a weapon. He erased any weight from my name without giving me a choice. There’s more than one way to murder someone. And if you’ve ever had your name taken away from you, you’d know.” Overwatch bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from getting overwhelmed. 

“Your name,” Clint murmured. “What is it?”

Another silence. “Smoak. Felicity Smoak. Don’t bother...looking it up, he deleted every trace of me, of my mother. Donna Smoak.”

Clint nodded. “I know what that’s like. To have a shitty person come along and take away everything you love and everything that you think makes you who you are. But, the part of you that’s Felicity isn’t gone. You’re not dead. You’re still alive. And you can either let him control you for the rest of your life or you can live.”

“And what?” Felicity looked over at him incredulously. “SHIELD is offering me a _life_? As what? A resource? No. Fuck no. According to you, I should trade in one pair of handcuffs for another.”

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t let them keep you prisoner, Felicity.”

She tensed at the name, but didn’t say anything. (Maybe Coulson was right about the whole “trust” thing but also, fuck Coulson.) “Who says you would have a choice? Would you go against the organization that saved your life to help me when you can barely stand me?”

“Listen, I’m annoyed that you fight dirty, I’m not just generally annoyed by who you are as a person.” Clint clarified. “The handcuffs are only in the literal sense and that’s just protocol for bringing in an unknown asset because in all technicalities, this is an arrest. Besides, I went against SHIELD for Nat, and now look at us. SHIELD isn’t just a job or a pair of handcuffs. SHIELD is an opportunity for you to be a part of something bigger than yourself.”

Overwatched pushed a strand of blue hair behind her ear and looked around at the people assembled in the small park.

“Think about it, okay?” Clint nudged her shoulder and passed her a slip of paper with his phone number written down on it. “I know you’re not all bad. Just rough around the edges. And who isn’t, really?”

Overwatch looked down at the paper--a ripped off bottom of what looked to be someone’s file and _Hawkeye you cannot be serious_ \--before glancing thoughtfully up at him and nodding. “I’m in.”

Clint blinked for a beat.

“What?”

“Unless this was all an elaborate scam to give me your number.” She held the paper between her middle and pointer fingers, like she was asking him if this was his card. “In which case, thanks--I mean you are very symmetrical and pleasing and your arms are like, the size of tree trunks--but no thanks.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You’re no prize yourself, sweetheart.” Clint put his hands on his hips and stared seriously down at a very relaxed criminal. “The offer is legit. Why are you taking it?”

“To join something bigger than myself, maybe.” She shrugged. “To annoy you, maybe. To spend more time with Nat. To learn how to have fun and be myself. To learn how to kill a man with my thighs. To use SHIELD’s resources to further my own agenda. To have people call me by my real name. But probably mostly to annoy you.”

“You’re like the puppy I never wanted.” He narrowed his eyes at her skeptically. “Do you have conditions?”

“What, like I would take advantage like that? Also, bullshit that you never wanted a puppy.”

“What are your conditions?”

“I will go in under my real name, but it won’t be widely known that Felicity Smoak is Overwatch,” She started, allowing him the shallow victory of weaseling the information out of her because the knit hat was starting to make her wig too hot and itchy. “I will go in under whatever cover story is the most convenient, but anyone who hasn’t been face to face with me or my file won’t know what I’ve done, not really. I’ll work with you and Nat on your STD team.”

“STD?” Clint asked in a confused tone.

“Strike Team Delta.”

Silence.

“Oh no.” Clint whispered, sinking back down onto the bench, cradling his face in his hands. “How did I not see this?”

Overwatch tilted her head back and laughed in delight. (And that totally did not make it at all okay because Clint wasn’t some sappy lead in a rom-com, but it might’ve come closer than he was strictly okay with which spelled out P-R-O-B-L-E-M-S.) Clint looked over at her with a frown.

“Does Nat know?”

She shrugged, trying to muffle her laughter and only succeeding in turning her full belly laugh into a giggle fit. “I don’t- I don’t know if she knows, but I am so glad that you didn’t!”

She snorted. Fucking snorted.

“Yuck it up,” Clint rolled his eyes and sat back on the bench. “You are literally the worst, you know that?”

“Oh boy, I needed that,” Felicity--because he couldn’t really think of her as Overwatch after watching her laugh like that--wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye. “Okay, okay. Jesus. Okay, I’m good- I’m--” Gigglesnort was the best way to describe that noise. “--good god, okay. Pull it together.”

He huffed impatiently, a blush dusting over the top of his cheeks. “No, take your time. I’m sure that this isn’t a normal thing for you.”

Felicity took a deep breath and let it out in a large gust of calming air. “Don’t pout, you won.”

“I’m inviting you to team up with Nat against me. This isn’t a win.” Clint scowled. “Besides, I still technically need to arrest you.”

She rolled her eyes and stood with him. Holding out her wrists for him to cuff, she looked up at him, slightly nervous. “Take me to your leader.” He raised an eyebrow at her as he clicked the cuffs into place. “But be gentle, if you will. I’m pretty bony and fragile. I bruise easy, too.”

“Do you always ramble like this, or do you only do it when someone’s trying to arrest you?” He asked as he led her back towards the SUV that he’d parked at the park entrance.

“All of the time.” She admitted. “Sexual innuendos and rambles, the name of my biography.”

“Don’t forget the whole hacking and playing cat and mouse with a SHIELD agent thing.”

“Yes, wouldn’t want to forget that. Although, doesn’t ‘cat and mouse’ mean a back and forth with close calls on both parts? According to my calculations--and the fact that this is my first time getting arrested--your score sits firmly at one while mine is closer to twenty.”

“Nineteen.”

“I bet you keep track with all of the girls.”

“Most of the girls can’t get away.” Clint threw back at her and gently helped her into the passenger seat of the SUV. He circled around the front and hopped into the driver’s seat. “Most, in fact, don’t want to.”

Felicity scrunched up her nose cutely. Wait, no. Not _cutely_. She scrunched up her nose...ugly-ly. Yeah. That. “Don’t make this gross, Clint. You’d have to be one kinky motherfucker to enjoy this like that.”

“Who says I’m not?” Clint wagged his eyebrows at her. “And I don’t appreciate the kinkshaming going on here.”

“What have I signed up for?”

*

After a short drive (“Would it do any good to blindfold you?” Clint asked and earned a derisive snort from Felicity and invitation to go ahead and _try_ before she went back to singing along to Smash Mouth.) and a walk through the SHIELD HQ to Fury’s office, Clint finally uncuffed the woman who hadn’t stopped snarking at him the entire time. 

“Alright, this is Fury’s office. This is the guy that you wanna convince that you go off the deep end if you work with me and Tash.” Clint instructed her before opening the door to the office and pushing Felicity in through it before he walked in himself. “I found a hacker on the sidewalk, Nick! Can we keep her? Please, oh please?”

Nick looked up from a mission report to see the blue-haired hacker giving Clint a decisively unhappy glare and sighed through his nose. He never had any use for antacids before Clint joined the agency. Not a once. “Barton. Why’s it always gotta be you?”

“Sheer talent and tenacity, sir!” Clint grinned.

“If this is who I think it is, the idea was to put her in a hole so far under the ground that no one would ever even be stupid enough to try to look over the side.” Fury clenched his jaw and looked over at her. “Are you who I think you are?”

“Couldn’t say, sir. I do not read minds.” Overwatch gave him a ‘what can you do’ shrug.

“This is who you think it is, but now we have a shot at actually learning, you know, _who she is_!” Clint chimed in.

“I’m getting fucking deja vu.” Fury stood and crossed the room to stand in front of his desk and crossed his arms in front of his chest as he glared at the two assets in front of him. “This is Romanov all over again. Except you’re remarkably less broken this time, Barton.”

“She tried to get wiley, sir, but after I bribed her with ice cream, she calmed down.”

“I do so enjoy a good mint chip.”

Fury sighed again.

This was not going to work out well for him.

*

Felicity wasn’t cleared for the team immediately. Too suspicious, Coulson had told them. Plus, he’d brought up, they needed to make sure that she wasn’t going to turn against them. Or worse, die in the field.

So, they’d started her out with a data analysis position. It was a droll desk job, but when she wasn’t weighed down by her revenge, Felicity was just...all around different. She’d always been bubbly, but with her newly blonde hair and bright blue eyes and bright aura, Felicity just breathed new life into the cubicle farm.

Natasha had made it a point to give Felicity a basic SHIELD crash course which had lasted all of six weeks before Natasha told Coulson that she, too, wanted Felicity on the team. Clint had turned into something of a frequent visitor to the cubicle farm. After training, missions, debriefs, fights with Natasha, even nightmares, Clint would flee down to the eighth floor to see Felicity. He didn’t know why he did it, but he had decided that he was going to protect her. In turn, though, Felicity seemed to have decided to stand by him whenever he needed.

Barely two months had passed before Felicity’s superiors were recommending her for field work and plenty of other promotions. One even recommended Felicity for a CS teaching position at the nerd brigade. 

It didn’t take long for the new Strike Team Delta to become a well oiled machine once more. Before, Clint and Natasha were already a team worth looking twice at, but as well as they worked together, they couldn’t find anyone (other than Coulson who was usually busy nowadays) to put up with them for extended periods of time--especially not someone who could function as a criminal world informant, run back end of a mission, and even operate as a fighter in the worst case scenario. Which they had learned, of course, during such a case merely six months into working together.

*

Clint cursed himself as he and Nat ran back to the hotel that was now swarmed with AIM agents. They should’ve seen the distraction for what it was. It wasn’t a secret anymore that a “new” hacker with skills up to par with the likes of Overwatch was working with the good guys and AIM, apparently, wished to “liberate” her.

Over Clint’s dead goddamn body.

After they had fought through the teams sent to secure the perimeter of the building, though, it was quiet. Too quiet for the middle of a kidnapped attempt. Fearing the worst, Clint climbed up the stairs faster than one would think possible for someone who just fought a good portion of AIM’s goon resources. The door from the stairwell to the sixth floor was locked, but it was nothing a desperate kick couldn’t handle.

He could hear Natasha’s voice a few floors down, but he ignored it.

He’d promised to keep Felicity safe and he’d die before he let her make a liar out of him. She was his responsibility now, Fury had made that clear when he’d finally sanctioned the new team for field work. Fuck, Clint had pretty much decided that Felicity was one of his people on that bench once he’d had the first and only peek into her background. Once he’d heard the hatred in her voice when she spoke Kutler’s name and the soft grief that had radiated out from her.

From that moment on, he’d promised both himself and her that he would keep her safe. He wouldn’t give her anymore reasons to sound like that.

And here he was, running down a hall and praying to any deity out there that he could go on playing catch up with her for at least his entire lifetime because he wouldn’t be able to handle it if he opened their hotel room to find her gone or dead or--

Sometimes he hated his imagination because he could picture her lying in a pool of her own blood too well. He could see her neck at the wrong angle, a gunshot in her head--or worse, her abdomen because that meant that she’d held on for longer, been in pain for longer, hoped for salvation for longer. He could see her blonde hair stained red as her favorite lipstick.

The door to their hotel door had already been kicked open and was littered with an unconscious man wearing bright yellow tactical armor on his back on the floor. Stepping into the room, Clint’s heart racing in hope and dread as he found four more bodies in similar conditions--knocked out with blunt force trauma for a stray gunshot.

It was once he got into the kitchen that he found Felicity grappling with the last one. She was on her back, a feral look on her face as she kneed her attacker in the crotch hard enough to make Clint consider feeling sorry for the guy. While he was struggling with that pain, Felicity reached out and grabbed one of the arrow heads that she’d made Clint that he’d left in the room. The entire room was in disarray, Nat’s widow bites and his own spare gear had been thrown in about thousand different places.

Using her attacker’s preoccupation against him, she grabbed the arrow head and stabbed it into his neck, letting go quickly as the weapon released thousands of volts of electricity.

Kicking the man’s unconscious body off of her, Clint pulled Felicity off of the floor and wrapped his arms around her waist before she could start snarking at him. For once in her life, Felicity didn’t even fight him on it, just returned his embrace thankfully while gulping in breaths of air.

Neither knew how long it was before Natasha’s voice brought them back to reality while she picked through the wreckage.

“Did you electrocute a guy with a fork and a socket?” Nat asked, making Felicity pull away and look at the guy that she was crouched over.

“I don’t know, maybe?” Felicity frowned and thought back. “Wait, yeah. Yeah, no, I did.”

Clint let out a breathless laugh and shook his head at her tired expression. “Where the hell did you learn how to take on six guys at once?”

“I told you.” Felicity wiped some blood off of the corner of her mouth. “He made me into a weapon. Not just a cyber one.”

“How old were you?” Nat asked, the two other conscious people in the room being the only people in this world that Felicity had trusted with the information about how Kutler had murdered her mother and turned her into a weapon. Clint suddenly felt at a loss--so furious with himself for never making the connection that Felicity could’ve been too fucking young when all of this happened.

Felicity shrugged again. “Eight? Maybe nine?”

Natasha pursed her lips and nodded. “I say we call this into SHIELD and then...vodka?”

“Whiskey?” Felicity countered. They both looked around before making eye contact again and speaking at the same time.

“Tequila.”

Clint shook his head at the two of them before drawing Felicity into one more thankful hug.

*

After the incident, though, SHIELD, too, became aware of Felicity’s past training. And after a very long lecture from Coulson about withholding information (“This may have worked out well this time, Smoak, but do you know how many people you could’ve helped when you were too busy keeping this under wraps? Do you know how many people risked their lives to protect you when _you didn’t need it_?”) which left Felicity still wincing every time Coulson pinned her with his disappointed stare, Phil had sat her down, kicked out Clint and Natasha, and demanded her life story.

Which is how Coulson had gotten the grounds to officially open a discreet investigation into Noah Kutler with the information gathering of Felicity on a laptop and Natasha in a cocktail dress at a high end casino in Vegas. It wasn’t until they’d gotten back that Clint had been made aware that it wasn’t just a trip, but intel gathering.

Specifically intel gathering for a mission with himself and Felicity going undercover.

“I don’t like this. Kutler will make you in a second.” Clint frowned at the file that Coulson put into his hands--both of them knowing damn well that he was itching to read anything about the man that Felicity hated with every molecule of her being.

“That’s kinda the point. I’m not going undercover as some rando,” Felicity told him clinically. “I’m going undercover as Overwatch finally making a move against him.”

Clint scowled at Felicity. “That’s worse. That means that you’re going to have to--”

“I know.”

“You’ll have to go face to face with him, Rambo.” Clint talked over her, for once not stopping when Felicity got that look on her face that meant that she was remembering all of the crap that she went through in painful detail. “You’ll have to be face to face with him. You barely keep yourself together at the thought of him. Nat already told me that you broke down when you saw him from across the street! I promised to protect you, and this will only hurt you!”

“I’m doing this with or without you!” Felicity used her Loud Voice. Clint winced. There was a slight misconception that most people had about the Loud Voice. It wasn’t always loud. It wasn’t yelling or shouting--or, rather, it wasn’t always those things. The Loud Voice, the well and true Loud Voice was a _tone_. A tone that made you feel two inches tall and made you reconsider every choice you’ve ever made in your life that brought you to this very moment in time.

Clint blinked down at Felicity with stubborn resolve.

“I’m doing this, Clint.” Felicity’s tone changed from sharp anger to soft pleading. “I _need_ to do this. I didn’t...I didn’t know when I joined SHIELD that you were going to give me this. Friendship, a team, a family. I want to be here. All of the time. I don’t want to keep going back to that place in my mind where I’m a scared seven year old kid watching her dad beat up her mom for the first and definitely not the last time. I didn’t know that having Nat and Coulson and Fury and you behind me would be an option--and option that I want more than anything. I’m doing this and I understand if you can’t, but I wouldn’t want anyone else by my side more than you.”

They stared at each other for a beat before Clint started cursing under his breath. He processed the new information and finally watched as another piece of the puzzle came into play. A piece that allowed him to make a pretty understandable connection. “Is Noah Kutler your father, Felicity?”

Felicity pursed her lips together and nodded wordlessly, earning another litany of curses. “Like I said, Clint, you don’t have to--”

“Of course I’m going in with you!” Clint rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m just pissed that I didn’t figure this out before!”

“I didn’t tell you.”

“Yeah, but I knew that there was more going on!” He turned to face her again and gave her a worried look. “I knew that there was more going on but I didn’t want to push.”

“And I appreciate that.” Felicity gave him a small smile in return. “But you can’t blame yourself for me not telling you.”

“As fun as this is to watch,” Coulson interrupted them. “I think it’s about time that I tell you what this mission is about, Agent Barton.”

*

The mission was pretty simple, overall. The end game was to use Felicity’s skills to go after Kutler using cyber warfare, busting him on about a thousand different broken laws and bringing his organization to its knees by stealing all of his money and donating it either to charities or terrorist organizations. In order to do that, though, Felicity needed to know where his money really was. She just needed to be ready when he transferred some to or from his personal account.

So that’s what she and Clint were to supposed do.

Clint would walk into Kutler’s casino and start counting cards while Felicity went all superspy.

(“Why couldn’t I be the one to go all superspy? I’m an _actual_ superspy. Plus, you’d look way better in formal wear than I do.” Clint griped in the hotel room where he was standing in front of a mirror, fiddling restlessly with his bowtie.

“Because if Kutler’s security sees my face on the floor,” Felicity answered from in the bathroom as she pulled on her catsuit. “They’d kill me in an instant. If they see you on the floor and eventually realize that you’re counting cards, they’ll be focused enough on you that I can get in and get to Noah’s office.” She pulled her blue wig into a tight ponytail and exited the bathroom to tuck it into a black ski mask. She looked Clint up and down and sat down on the end of one of the beds to pull on her knee high boots that Nat had given her for her first mission. They were custom made with secret compartments in the heels. “My eye holes aren’t matching up. Have you ever had this problem?”

Clint looked over at her and let out a low whistle. “Why is it that you and Nat look like sin in those catsuits and I look like a deranged cat.”

“Maybe it’s because you definitely belong in a monkey suit.” Felicity shrugged, tugging on her gloves. “Or, well, let’s be honest: Nat would fill out that suit better than you, too.”

“Right? How’s a guy supposed to hold onto his self esteem with people like you and Nat around?”)

(“Clint, do you _know_ how to count cards?” Felicity asked over their comms as Clint lost the third hand in a row.

“Yes!” Clint hissed, covering it up as if he was pleased with his new cards.

“Whatever you say,” Felicity chuckled, watching the guards grumble about the dinner order. It took him a while, but eventually Clint got focused enough to gather some attention. “Alright, a man the size of the David is heading towards you. Be careful.” She warned Clint and swiftly moved from the fire escape on the building behind the casino. She crept in the shadows past a few pairs of guards until she got to the now weak spot--chuckling under her breath as Clint started weaving more and more elaborate stories about his ‘ex-wife’.

Felicity was able to knock out the single guard without too much trouble. She pulled him behind a large garbage bin. Turning back to the door, she typed in the security password that she’d witnessed the guard before typing in before kneeling down to pick the manual lock quickly enough to bypass both security systems. She slipped into the hallway quietly and looked around until she found the vent that they’d planned for her to go through.)

Felicity was to set her trap and then wait until Clint was taken into the back room to be given a “talking to” about what was fair and what wasn’t.

(Clint gave his best nervous laugh as he was shoved into a plush chair on one side of a side that held Noah Kutler on the other side. Noah Kutler, the human trafficker, the thief, the arms dealer, the tax evader, the murderer. Kutler’s file head about 1,001 criminal reasons for Clint to hate this man, but the one that made his fingers itch for a bow the most was the knowledge that this was the monster who took away Felicity’s name and childhood.

He played the part of being scared because he knew that soon enough, Kutler was going to know fear and he was going to know it at the hands of the woman who he thought he could control.

Whatever Kutler was rambling about--no doubt the normal “you think you can do these things back you cannot” speech--was coming to an end as he motioned to the two guards at the door behind Clint.

“Why don’t you teach our friend here a lesson about stealing from the wrong people?” Noah suggested in a voice that made it sound like this was the only reasonable scenario here.

“See, I’d love to,” Clint held up his hands in surrender. “But my partner wouldn’t take too kindly to that. She likes it better when I’m in one piece.”

“Your partner?” Noah sat up straight in his chair, on high alert.

Spurred by his signal, Felicity triggered the small explosives she’d stashed at all of the entrances save for the front one while at the same time triggering a motion sensor in the saferoom.

Noah scowled at the noise and turned to Clint. “Your partner, I presume.” He waved a hand at his two guards. “Go. Find her and bring her to me so that I can give both of them a little talk about respect myself.”

The minute the two guards left the room, though, the vent behind Kutler was kicked out and a lithe female body dropped down. Overwatch stood behind Kutler proudly--and boy did a part of Clint purr at that--as she held up a small remote that Clint knew was blocking any communication from leaving this room and locking the door electronically without allowing any hope of being hacked.

Because as much as Clint had gotten used to Felicity over these last few months, she was still Overwatch.

She pulled the ski mask off and offered her father a cocky smile that Clint could tell was as fragile as he’d feared, but held up to Noah’s surprised examination.

“Overwatch.” Noah spoke in a surprised-but-trying-to-hide-it tone. “It’s been a while. I had hope that you’d finally moved on.”

“I tend to hold onto grudges. It’s a character flaw, but what can you do?” She shrugged, a practiced devil may care aura cultivating around her and _wow_ Clint hadn’t been able to tell how much she’d changed since he’d first met her until he was face to face with the whole persona again.)

And from there, blackmail was the name of the game.

(“I do like the blue,” Kutler remarked at Felicity before, whip quick, drawing a gun from under his desk to train on her. “Too bad you had to pull this stunt. I know that you’ve always wanted to find a look that worked for you. Maybe the prison I send you to will have a hair stylist like Orange is the New Black.”

“Please, that show is inaccurate as fuck,” Felicity rolled her eyes, perfectly calm with her own _father_ holding a gun on her. “You actually gonna pull the trigger? I need to know if I need to go to another black market doctor again.”

Clint silently pulled out his gun and had Kutler in his sights the minute Noah had reached for his gun, but only spoke after Felicity’s comment. “Wait, he’s shot you before?”

“No, Overwatch just has a tendency for the dramatic.” Noah spoke like an exasperated father as he backed up to have both his daughter and her partner in his view. 

“He got me in the shoulder the first time I tried to escape.” Felicity informed Clint. “Nearly paralyzed me by using me as a human shield when he got into a firefight. Got me in the stomach the second time I confronted him after leaving.”

“See? Dramatic. They were all either grazes or through and throughs. No lasting damage, nothing complicated.” Kutler shrugged.

“I had to go to a friend who I knew had first aid training in the army.” Felicity scowled. “He said that I died on the table four times because of complications from the stomach wound. Not to mention that with the gsw’s in my back, I actually had to go to the hospital and I almost died more times than I could count during surgery. Afterwards, I had to break out because I knew he wouldn’t come for me.”

“Jesus,” Clint breathed out in anger. He glared at Kutler. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t just fucking shoot you and leave your corpse in the desert for a flock of vultures.”

“Well, I wouldn’t particularly enjoy that.” Kutler shrugged, gaze darting over to his door.

Felicity rolled her eyes and Clint moved forward while he was distracted to disarm him and throw his gun across the room. “Don’t bother. I have all of the exits covered. I wanted to have a little talk with you involving what you’re willing to pay to keep your lousy name and mug out of the papers for the next year.”)

At the end of the day, the deal was simple. Trick Kutler into thinking that he could steal from what he thought was Felicity’s personal accounts and put the money into his own account.

(“You’ll transfer the money into this account.” Felicity instructed, leaving a card on Kutler’s desk. “And don’t even bother trying to hack into it, I’m better than that.”

“You,” Kutler sighed and shook his head. “Are Icarus. You’re flying too close to the sun than you can handle and you’re about to burn for your arrogance.”

“Gee, thanks, dad.” Felicity spoke in a bored tone. “Transfer the money or I talk. Your choice. Your deadline is twelve hours from now.” Felicity looked around the room before shrugging and using her elbow to shatter the only glass window in the office. “Alright, cheater, let’s go.”

And with that, the two agents jumped into the vents and made their exit.)

And then they waited for the inevitable hack.

(“You gave him the account number for a higher up in the Ten Rings, right?” Clint asked, offering Felicity a box of apple juice as he sat down on the couch in the hotel with her. She had her laptop balanced on her legs, catsuit still conforming to every curve of her body, but now with the gloves, wig, or mask. She ran her fingers through her blonde hair before accepting the juice box gratefully.

“Absolutely.” She confirmed. “After he hacks in and grabs their funds, I should be able to track them to his own accounts and wipe out his entire world while leaving enough traces to terrorist groups for the United States government to take away every single right he has and throw him into Guantanamo Bay while they investigate everything he’s ever done in his life.”

“That’s my girl.” Clint smirked at her. “What was the deal with the window?”

“I wanted to break something of his.”

“Be still my heart.”)

Overall, when it was announced that Noah Kutler was charged with murder, extortion, treason, kidnapping, human trafficking, and too many other things to count, no one on Strike Team Delta was really surprised.

It just...wasn’t what Felicity had expected.

*

“I expected to feel better,” She confessed to Clint during a lull in an MMA sparring match. Clint looked up at her in surprise, ducking under a few jabs before snapping his leg out to clip her knees. She fell, but rolled down into it before popping back up further away from him before Clint had a chance to push his advantage. 

“Feel better about what?” He asked, shifting his weight before reaching out to punch her, only to have her duck under his arm and land a few punches on his abs before he was able to push her away. 

“Putting him away.” She answered, blocking a few of his hits. She answered them with a kick to his stomach during a pause in his barrage. “I know that he’s paying for everything he did now.” She continued, pushing her own advantage by going after him with a plethora of jabs and using her superior speed against him. “But I’m still hurt and angry. I thought that I was...I was gonna get closure.”

Clint danced away from Felicity, but she didn’t let up, using her anger and helplessness fuel her. He struggled to keep up with her without risking actually hurting her while she was in this state and decided to go down to kick her feet out from underneath her before rolling away to give her some space to get back up. “Closure,” He repeated. “Isn’t going to heal you.”

“Then what,” Felicity lashed out with her fist, emphasizing every word with a jab. “Is the point? How can I ever feel better? When will he stop haunting me?”

Clint grabbed her wrists, realizing that she was no longer fit to spar. He held her close to his chest. “It does get better, Rambo. Time. Time and people who love you. That’s what will make it get better. You have to believe in it, too. Wake up every day and tell yourself that you’re happy and one day...one day it won’t be a lie.”

*

(Clint totally pretending that he didn’t notice the sticky note on Felicity’s vanity with the words “you’re happy” written on it. Felicity was thankful for the pretense, even if it did make Clint’s mouth do that weird happy sad smile.)

*

It was nearly two months after the sparring match when Natasha cornered Clint in the range with a knowing look on her face.

“What’d I do this time, Nat?” Clint groused. “Please, just cut me some slack. I’ve spent this entire week keeping busy so I won’t go put an arrow in Noah Kutler’s stupid face.”

“How long have you been in love with Felicity?”

Clint froze and turned to look at Nat with wide eyes. “What the _hell_ , Natasha!? You can’t just say shit like that!”

“I’m not hearing a denial,” Natasha grinned.

Clint opened his mouth before closing it again. “I shouldn’t even dignify this question with a response. I do not like Felicity, much less love her.”

Nat raised an eyebrow--and _God_ he hated it when she did that. “Really? So if I broke down in the middle of sparring, you’d hold me for half an hour and then take me out for ice cream so that you could see me smile again?”

“How’d you know about that!?” He squeaked. “You know what? Nevermind! I do not love Felicity.”

“Sure, sure.” Natasha grinned and shrugged. “Whatever you say, Clint.”

Clint _hated_ when she did that. It usually meant that she was right and, nothing against Felicity, Clint really hoped that she wasn’t right.

*

She was right. Of course she was. She was the Black Widow. Or, more importantly, she was Nat who somehow knew all of the gossip around SHIELD and every emotion you’ve ever felt just by looking at you for a few seconds.

She was right and Clint...well, Clint wasn’t good at the whole ‘subtly flirting until the point got across and then dating for a month before labeling it’ so he decided to go for the direct approach.

He was also kinda a coward so he did it over text message.

(Nat could kill him after he figured out if Felicity felt the same.)

*

To: Rambo  
From: Braton

 _Hey, I love you, wanna get married?_  
11:11 pm

To: Braton  
From: Rambo

 _What the actual fuck, Clint?_  
11:42 pm  
_If you’re being serious, fucking buy me dinner first._  
11:42 pm  
_If you’re not, honestly just fuck you because that’s not even remotely cool._  
11:43 pm

To: Ramno  
From: Braton

 _I’m being serious._  
11:44 pm  
_Felicity, I’ve come to realize that I love you._  
11:45 pm  
_But I don’t wanna play any games._  
11:45 pm  
_And in our line of work, we’re never guaranteed tomorrow._  
11:46 pm  
_I want to be with you in every sense of the word._  
11:46 pm  
_Marry me?_  
11:47 pm

To: Braton  
From: Rambo

 _Buy me dinner first._  
11:50 pm  
_We can talk about it._  
11:50 pm

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm supposed to be writing the last few chapters of HDWEULT?
> 
> I know.
> 
> I blame you guys.
> 
> Go follow me on social media:
> 
> [see wally_birb for pretty pictures](http://www.instagram.com/wally_birb/)
> 
> [see alpha-whale for snark in spades](http://www.alpha-whale.tumblr.com)


End file.
